Word: flagstad
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Burly Tenor Ramon (Otello) Vinay was in a sweat. A Chilean trained for Italian and French opera, he had worked hard for over a year to huff himself into a German-style Heldentenor, and he was all set to sing his first Tristan, with Kirsten Flagstad as Isolde. San Franciscans (and Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing, who sorely needs a successor to Lauritz Melchior) were all set to hear him. But a fortnight ago, with debut day almost at hand, Tenor Vinay was bogged down in Chile. A stubborn Santiago impresario refused to let him leave the country until...
...helped himself to memorize his role by sleeping with the speaker of a cerebrograph (automatic record player) under his pillow to embed the music in his subconscious. But, not knowing German itself, he expected to have a dreadful time following the other singers and catching his cues. Flagstad ("She was always there prompting me or giving me a signal with her eyes") took care of that...
...last wishes of the late Richard Strauss was that Kirsten Flagstad should be the soprano to introduce the four songs which he finished in 1948, the year before his death at 85 (TIME, Sept. 19). "I would like to make it possible," he wrote to her, "that [the songs] should be at your disposal for a world premiere in the course of a concert with a first-class conductor and orchestra." In London last week Composer Strauss's wish was fulfilled to the letter...
...With Albert Hall packed for the occasion, great-domed German Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler stepped to the podium to lead London's Philharmonia Orchestra. Plump and majestic, Soprano Flagstad took her place near his side, solemnly donned spectacles to read the music. What followed was a moving and deliberate farewell from a composer who, in his earlier years, had turned out the rich and masterful scores of Der Rosenkavalier, Death and Transfiguration, Don Quixote...
Sung as only Flagstad can sing, with her gorgeous, earth-mother quality of sound, The Four Last Songs (Going to Sleep, September, Spring, At Sunset), were echoes of the old composer's most mellow and memorable days. They spoke of a calm tiredness, deep autumnal peace, affection for his wife. At Sunset ended with a quiet and resigned interrogation: "Is this perhaps death?" As the last soft sounds died in the orchestra, one listening musician said, "What an epitaph to write for oneself...